Acoustic source localization using L-shaped sensor clusters: A review

Acoustic source localization (ASL) plays an important role in structural health monitoring (SHM). The L-shaped sensor cluster (LSSC) is very convenient for ASL, and hence SHM. Various techniques based on LSSC have been developed rapidly in the past decade. LSSC can be conveniently used for damage detection and localization, a necessary step for monitoring structures through non-destructive testing (NDT). After ten years of development, LSSC still has a wide development space. In this paper, the fundamental roles of LSSC in developing different techniques within last ten years and its future potentials are discussed. The LSSC-based time difference of arrival localization techniques and the wave front shape-based localization techniques are reviewed in detail in this paper. This paper aims to give readers a more comprehensive and clear understanding of these techniques. The discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of these techniques and various sources of the errors will give the readers the current limitations and future development prospects of ASL and damage detection techniques using LSSC.